Edward Osei Nketia sets New Zealand 100m Record at World Athletics Championships
Edward Osei Nketia of New Zealand not only advanced to the semifinals of the 100-meter heats at the World Athletics Championships by clocking 10.08 seconds, but he also shattered his father’s 28-year-old national record.
When his father Augustine Nketia ran a 10.11 at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria, Canada, Osei-Nketia, now 21 years old, had not even been born. Augustine competed in the 100m at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and was a prior Olympian.
Augustine Nketia was competing for Ghana and in 1990 he switched nationality to New Zealand.
“I never thought I’d achieve it in my life … it felt like a dream,” Osei-Nketia told New Zealand’s 1News.
Edward Osei Nketaih was born in 2001 and is now 21 years. He also becomes the first Kiwi man to make 100m semis at the World Athletics Championships since his father did it in Goteborg 1995.
“At first, I just reacted that I was in the semi-finals because that was my goal. But me getting that record, I was like, ‘I did it! I got the record. I finally got the record!'”
When asked if his father was upset that the record was no longer his, Osei-Nketia said he had actually taken it well.
“My dad was actually surprisingly proud. I thought that he would be heartbroken, sad and angry because he expected that record was going to be there for ever and ever,” Osei-Nketia added.
“But for his son to take it, it was good but it was bad at the same time!”